The Facts:
Pizza: Famous Pizza and Restaurant in Anderson ,
SC
Business Category: Locally-owned
Website: (none)
Location: 1417 Pearman Dairy Road
(on SR 28 just south of Whitehall Rd. )
Date of Review Visit: March
9, 2016
What I Ordered: small (10”) meats pizza; Mello Yellow to
drink
Price: $12.73 (includes drink and tax but not tip)
The Micro:
Crust: I would classify Famous Pizza as Greek-style: the
crust is thick and crispy around the edges but very thin underneath. Even worse, the crust on my pizza was wet and
soggy underneath from grease, so much so that it could not support the toppings. The fresh bready taste around the edges is passable,
but the texture and the crust underneath the pizza need some work. Score: 4/10.
Sauce: The sauce has a very tomatoey taste; I could taste no
spices whatsoever. Usually I complain
about sauce being overspiced, but this one fails in the opposite
direction. The quantity of the sauce is sufficient,
so it could be worse. Score: 6/10.
Cheese: The cheese looks and tastes like 100% mozzarella, so
the taste is a little bland. The cheese
is applied in good quantity, but it produces more grease than good quality
cheese should. Score: 7/10.
Toppings: Pellet sausage alert! Pellet sausage is never a good sign, and this
pizza is no exception. The rest of the toppings
have some spicy heat but little flavor. The
salami (part of the meats pizza toppings package) tastes odd with the rest of
the spicy Greek/Italian meat toppings.
All toppings appear in sufficient quantity. Overall, I have had worse, but I have definitely
had better. Score: 6/10.
The Macro:
Appearance/Atmosphere/Service: The pizza’s appearance is fine
except for the pellet sausage, and the restaurant features a nice homey dining
area. It took me 5 minutes to get a
waitresses’ attention even though there was only one other customer in the
restaurant when I walked in. Once the
service started, it was fine. Score:
7/10.
Value: Famous Pizza’s topping pricing scheme forced me to
order the meats pizza in order to maximize the value: it is only a few cents
more expensive than my usual 2-topping small pizza. That said, the price is about average (for a
meats pizza), and the quality is about average.
Thus, the value is about average.
Score: 5/10.
Taste: There is really not a lot to commend the taste of
this pizza. The salami and other toppings
clash violently on the taste palette, and the soggy crust is a real turnoff
even though it only indirectly affects the taste buds. Score: 12/20.
The Final Judgment:
Famous Pizza does not rank so famously in my book. There are far better pizza options in Anderson
such as DaVinci’s,
Mellow Mushroom, or New York Pizza and Pasta. Score: 47/80.
